Entertainment

Sneak Peek: What's On Tap for Firefox in 2010

It has been just shy of two weeks since the first release candidate of Firefox 3.5 became available for download, and reports say that the latest version of Firefox should go official tomorrow. Yet already, the Mozilla team is wasting no time in preparing for Firefox 3.6 — the next, next big version of the world's second most popular web browser.

Scheduled for early-to-mid 2010, Firefox 3.6 promises a number of major feature improvements over the current generation, so much so that it could actually see a bigger number jump (in the same manner that Firefox 3.5 was originally called "3.1," until its newness made it more than just an incremental release). To avoid confusion, then, developers at Mozilla often refer to Firefox 3.6 as "Firefox.next" or refer to it by its codename, "Namoroka," named for a national park in Madagascar. So what's on tap for users in Namoroka? Here's a sneak peek, though keep in mind that this early in the development cycle, things are bound to change.

Top Priority Changes

The following are top priority changes and additions for the Firefox.next team. These are generally not cosmetic enhancements, but things that will have a real, noticeable effect on how you use the browser and how it performs.

Better Peformance - For Firefox.next improving browser performance is one of the biggest goals. That means "dramatic, human-perceivable speed increases," such as getting startup time, and the time it takes to do common tasks like open a new tab, open a bookmarked page, or complete an address in the Awesomebar to under 50ms. One of the main areas of focus for Firefox 3.5 was improved JavaScript performance via the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which means faster, more responsive web apps. For the next version, performance improvements will be felt in how the browser itself functions.

More Personalization and Customization Options - One thing that has always made Firefox stand out, is how easily you can change the look, feel, and functionality through themes and add-ons. In Firefox.next, one of the top priorities is a long talked about "light weight" framework for themes and add-ons that would allow you to load them up without restarting the browser. That would make testing out new personalization and customizations a much easier and faster process.

New Navigation Options - Mozilla wants users of Firefox.next to be able to organize their tabs based on the task they are attempting to accomplish. That means adding the ability to search for existing tabs, and the ability to navigate by tag, date, or source metadata, which could borrow from the unconventional navigation elements in Mozilla's Ubiquity project. Lower priority enhancements to Firefox navigation in this area include giving users the ability to create, save, restore groups of tabs, and adding some light file management features — such as copy, move, and delete — to the download manager.

Better Web App Support - Web apps are a huge part of Mozilla's vision for the future of computing, which is why Firefox.next will add better support for them. For the next version of Firefox, this means an improved interface for uploading files to websites, but more importantly it means the ability to save web pages as applications. That likely points to an integration of the Prism project, which is a Firefox extension that lets users pop web applications out of the browser and run them directly on the desktop. Helping web applications run and feel more like their desktop counterparts could be an important part of bringing web apps to a mainstream audience.

What Else is Being Considered?

In addition to the main focus areas mentioned above, Mozilla is also considering a number of other features and changes for Namoroka. Many of these might never find their way into the next version of Firefox, but a few of them very likely will.

Taskfox - Taskfox is a recently announced project at Mozilla to bring some of the experimental Ubiquity user interface and navigation paradigms to Firefox. Some of those navigation features are higher priority and will more likely find their way into Firefox.next, but if there's time, we could actually see a lot more of Ubiquity in the next big version of Firefox.

Better Session Management - I already mentioned that the ability to create, save, and restore a group of tabs is a low priority addition for Firefox.next, but this would be such a hugely useful feature that it deserves a second mention. Firefox can currently save and restore session data when you shut down the entire program or suffer through a browser crash, but there's not really a good way to just save a set of tabs and put them aside for later, which is something I often want to do when researching multiple posts. The best option right now is just to bookmark tabs or save them elsewhere (like in a text file or on Delicious) — those aren't very good options.

Personally Customized Browser - Mozilla is tentatively planning for a Firefox that can adjust itself based on how you surf the web. That means things like personalized form and search fill-in features, and a new "about:me" page that gives you statistics about your browsing history and behavior.

Identity Management - There's not much information about what this means, but Mozilla is again talking identity management as they did before Firefox 3.0. Back then it meant things like OpenID and CardSpace — we'll have to see what it means this time around.

New Tab Page - One of the coolest features of Google's Chrome browser is their new tab page, which shows users their most frequently visited web sites when they open up a new tab. Firefox might be planning to follow suit in version 3.6 with something perhaps similar to the proposed new tab page prototype they showed off in March.

What other features would you like to see in the next version of Firefox? Let us know in the comments.

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